1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to electronic tables. Specifically, the present invention provides a way to hide columns in an electronic table so that horizontal space is conserved.
2. Related Art
Practitioners in the art have established a number of methods to conserve horizontal space within an electronic table. The most common methods all deal with collapsing the table columns as a means to achieve increased viewing of other higher priority columns. There currently exist three common visual techniques to collapse a table column: (1) resize the table column, potentially to the point of being visually removed; (2) remove or hide a column or set of columns to gain horizontal space; and (3) set a minimum width for a table column. The first two techniques behave in a similar fashion, while the minimum width approach prevents a table column from being completely collapsed down.
Unfortunately, there are a number of shortcomings associated with each of each technique. In the first technique, there is no indication that the column is hidden. As such, a user must have knowledge that one or more columns is hidden between two of the columns are visible. If there is more than one column in the first technique, they must be added back in order. In the case of the second technique (which also applies to the first technique), there is no way to indicate status propagation to the column header because its visualization has been completely removed. Additionally, there is still no indication that the column exists and typically there is a separate dialog that the user must navigate into in order to choose which columns to show or hide. In the minimum width technique, the shortcomings are that: (a) the size is predetermined programmatically rather than leaving the decision to the user, and (b) the user cannot maximize their horizontal space due to this restriction.